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Sucker Punch

To explain what this one is about is not going to be easy. An orphaned young woman, nicknamed Baby Doll (Emily Browning) is sent to a mental asylum after her mother dies and her abusive step-father wants nothing to do with her. There she falls into her own fantasy world, where she imagines the asylum to be some sort of high-class bordello, and befriends a group of girls (Abbie Cornish, Jamie Chung, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens) in the hope that they will help her escape. Yet the fantasy does not stop there. This young woman also imagines herself and her friends in a variety of action-packed other-worldly adventures whilst they attempt to collect items they will need to plan their escape. Think Kill Bill meets Moulin Rouge meets One Flew Over The Cookoo’s Nest.

Director Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen) clearly thinks he’s made the coolest movie of all time. On face value, you could say he’s achieved that. It looks the nuts, with very stylish camera work throughout and a pop-rock soundtrack to die for. Also in the young cast he’s probably delivered every pubescent boy’s ideal fantasy. But this is a movie with a story so bizarrely plotted and poorly explained that even though I understood what the movie was trying to achieve, the overwhelming action and style didn’t make a great deal of sense to me. Ok, Baby Doll’s reality is hell, fair enough – but why imagine being a prostitute in a bordello? And then why further imagine yourself as a samurai wielding bad-ass fighting dragons, robots and re-incarnated Nazis? It doesn’t ring even the least bit true. When the movie switches to these action-packed sequences however, it becomes any action-loving movie fan’s wet dream with superbly shot acrobatics and brilliant comic-book styled excess. Yet outside of these scenes, the movie falls apart very quickly. A case of some great ideas, plenty of ambition, and a big budget desperately in need of a good writer.

Glad you agree. On further inspection of the movie too, I feel that if Zack Snyder hadn’t bothered with the mental asylum opening and closing, the movie would work a whole lot better. As it stands, still a fun ride.

“Ok, Baby Doll’s reality is hell, fair enough – but why imagine being a prostitute in a bordello?”

Because it was implied that Baby Doll and the others were being raped/abused at the asylum by the orderly and fantasy she imagines was deeply influenced by that. And when that too much of reality began to shine through that first fantasy layer she created a second that she though could surpress the others. Granted, I have no idea how some of the fight scenes in the second fantasy were related.

A fair point, I just found it hard to believe Babydoll would imagine herself in a situation almost as bad as the one she was in. Aren’t her fantasies a way of escaping the horrors of her reality? So how is being a prostitute in a brothel/bordello any better?